Written by Ian Axtell, Subject Leader for Music Education, Secondary Partnership Coordinator.

Ian was recently asked by Teachingmusic.org to post a guest editorial article on their website. Here are some highlights from the article. To read the full article please click here.

“During a recent school experience review a group of beginning music teachers shared their concerns about the assessment regimes that are now being imposed on some secondary music departments. The hope was that an absence of levels would provide the potential for more freedom, creating opportunities for school based music teachers to assess in ways that are appropriate for their pupils in a range of different school contexts. However, this freedom is being denied and instead music teachers in some schools are now being asked to comply with assessment regimes that focus on generic systems linked to core subjects…In the worst cases, music teachers in schools are being de-professionalised, their voices and opinions ignored in an environment that emphasises a deficit model of teacher performance. This deficit model seeks to identify shortcomings and demands compliance based on a narrow perspective of teaching and learning.”

“One type of activity for every child is prioritised, usually performing, in the context of a particular musical tradition, often a tradition in which we feel most comfortable. The problem with this reductionist approach is that we are in danger of forgetting what children can bring to their own music education. We also restrict children’s musical thinking so that they only make music in particular ways. Opening up the curriculum and creating the potential for musical thinking that includes more than just procedural knowledge or knowledge of how to play has certainly created some of the most rewarding moments in my teaching career. There is something particularly magical when you can create the potential for learning rather than just tell pupils what to do. This happens most powerfully when pupils are provided with opportunities to compose:

“Composing is part of the ‘real stuff’ in music”
(Mills, 2005: 45).

“I want to encourage pupils to think in other ways, particularly by analysing and evaluating what they hear and then make choices and bring ideas together by being creative. Performing then becomes part of a broader composing process where pupils are engaging with what Benjamin Bloom (1956) would identify as the higher levels of the cognitive domain.”